This year’s session of the Iowa State Legislature is – slowly, painfully, laboriously – grinding toward its conclusion. Remarkably, however, they appear to have accomplished relatively little, and only a portion of that was even relevant.

Instead of tackling some of the major and pressing issues currently facing our state, the Legislature has instead whiled away its time like a college student waiting out the remainder of his or her semester. Most of the large bills coming before the Legislature – or at least the ones we’ve heard anything about – have brought their own controversies with them, instead of solving existing ones.

Take the statewide smoking ban, for instance. Who, prior to this legislative session, had heard any serious discussion on this topic? Why, also, has the Legislature occupied several weeks of the people’s time on what should be an open and shut case? Yes, smoking is bad, but isn’t it the place of the establishment’s owner to decide whether to allow it? Yes, thousands of Iowans fall victim to the horrors of smoking-related illness each year, but consider this: If we are going to ban smoking indoors because of its health effects, is the Legislature prepared to ban fast food, ice cream, red meat, driving, flying, unprotected sex, balers, grain augers, boxing, swimming, water-skiing and any number of other potentially unhealthy behaviors? Drinking is a potentially harmful addiction very much akin to smoking – is the Legislature prepared to return Iowa to the Prohibition days of the 1920s? This whole subject was a non-issue before the Legislature made it an issue.

Collective bargaining for state employees? Who, aside from a few union activists, a handful of state employees and the local chapter of Marxists of America really saw this as a hot-button issue? That’s not to say unions don’t do some very good things, or that some collective bargaining power isn’t warranted – but do we really want important issues like class size, class schedule, and possibly even curriculum items being the product of collective bargaining agreements? Are we prepared to allow the state – or the state’s employees – to use our children as leverage? Again, we find here a bill that created an issue, and an issue that raises more questions than the Legislature is either willing or able to answer.

Then there are the issues that are, for yet another year, left to be taken up by another Legislature in another year.

Rural Iowa, for instance, needs a road bill.

Bridges crumbling, roads deteriorating, counties unable to gravel their gravel roads or salt and sand their paved roads, all on the heels of the Iowa DOT’s completion of the decade-spanning I-235 project. This is a real problem, with real consequences, for people here and now.

The state could also use some oversight. The CIETC debacle (as if we aren’t all sick and tired of hearing about it by now), for instance, is a classic example of just how in bed the state agencies are with Polk County and the city of Des Moines. Other examples include the Iowa Values Fund, a multimillion dollar money express, carrying tax dollars out of the countryside and into the cities.

This kind of one-sided irresponsibility simply must stop, especially in light of the state’s tendency to claim poverty most years when the annual spending bill comes up.

Our Legislature should also consider revising the state’s municipal annexation laws.

Current laws make it far too easy for such cities as Des Moines or Ankeny to swallow vast swaths of farmland in practically no time. Not only is this a direct assault on everything that this state ought to stand for in the way of defending its farmers, but it encourages urban sprawl and an exodus from downtown neighborhoods.

Perhaps we expect too much from our legislators. Perhaps our mistake is in assuming that they’re listening. Either way, Iowa faces real issues, which require real answers, from a Legislature with an actual spine.

Our liberties we prize, and our rights we shall maintain.

– Ryan Frederick is a senior in management from Orient.